CORPORATIONS: Sugar Plum

In a small, green-carpeted room of San
Francisco's Bank of America, one of the biggest sugar deals in West
Coast history was quietly sealed. Last week, for $5,250,000, husky,
handsome Charles Edouard de Bretteville, 36, and associates announced
that they had picked up the choicest pieces of the disintegrating J.D.
& A.B. Spreckels companies, a sprawling empire founded by bearded Claus
Spreckels in 1863, which once held some 50 companies worth $60 million.

Most of the heirs of old Clausfive women and three men, among them
Playboy (five marriages) Adolph B. Spreckels Jr.had shown little
interest in the business. As...